TOKYO -- Low wages represent the principal reason that many foreign interns in Japan desert their jobs, a recent report by the Ministry of Justice found, highlighting that these workers often are regarded simply as a cheap way to plug Japan's ever-growing labor shortage.

More than 345,000 blue-collar foreign laborers are expected to enter Japan within a five-year period starting from fiscal 2019, but expectations as to their status and potential appear to differ significantly between the industries they are set to join.

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — A government survey showed Friday that 77.0 percent of job-hunting university students in Japan who are set to graduate in March next year had secured informal work contracts as of Oct. 1, up 1.8 percentage point from a year before.

The number of people out of work for more than a year came to 480,000, according to the Labor Force Survey for the July-September quarter released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications recently. That represents a drop of 30,000 on the previous quarter and is the lowest figure since the ministry began issuing quarterly surveys in 2002.

The nationwide unemployment rate fell to 2.3 percent, down from 2.4 percent the previous month and remaining near the lowest level since the early 1990s, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said.

TOKYO -- The majority of the Japanese public backs Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to admit more foreign workers to address the nation's labor shortage, with support particularly strong among young people, the latest Nikkei survey shows.

Only two fourth-generation people of Japanese ancestry living overseas have been granted permission to work in Japan since the government began accepting applications under a new visa program in late March to help solve a chronic labor shortage.

Education Minister Masahiko Shibayama said on Tuesday that an ongoing probe into gender bias at 81 medical universities found that the practice of unfairly docking marks in entrance exam scripts of female applicants appeared to be "quite widespread".